School Choice, Carnegie, and Alum Rock

It's surely too soon to declare an end to education's most
overheated argument--school choice--with the electoral defeat of
President Bush, who pressed unsuccessfully for tax-supported vouchers
for parents of private school children. The Democratic victory probably
foreclosed any prospects for such national voucher legislation. But
public school choice retains broad, bipartisan support and will surely
seek new outlets. Most likely, the November election did not end the
debate, but merely decentralized it.

Many of the biggest school districts, New York City, San Francisco,
and Washington among them, are considering giving parents broad new
rights to select among public schools. Thirteen states, including
President Clinton's Arkansas, have adopted public school choice in
varying degrees since Minnesota became the first in 1987. And while
Colorado voters in November rejected a statewide voucher proposal, a
similar measure may appear on the California ballot in 1994.

In a recently published report, "School Choice,'' the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching applauded the expansion of
educational options among public schools. But our support was
conditional: It extended only to plans whose aims are to strengthen
public education generally, and to make excellent education accessible
to every child regardless of location or family income. We were
especially impressed by East Harlem, N.Y.; Montclair, N.J.; and
Cambridge, Mass. Choice in these districts has invigorated teachers and
administrators, inspired a wide range of educational options, and,
significantly, has secured a priceless base of satisfaction among
parents and students.

But we also concluded that the debate has exaggerated choice's
potential as a reform tool while overlooking its costs and hazards.
Faith has too often overshadowed fact in the choice discussion. Where
it has succeeded, choice was invariably accompanied by ample funding,
well-crafted systems of parent information, adequate transportation,
and not least, school administrators and teachers creative and
dedicated enough to craft excellent, distinctive programs.

All of this may be too obvious to belabor. Yet clearly a good deal
of mythmaking has grown up around choice costs and accomplishments. To
cite just a couple of examples, how often have the many accounts of
Cambridge's successful choice program included the central facts that
the district is spending more than $9,000 per pupil, and that two out
of three children ride buses to school each day at very considerable
public expense? And while East Harlem is undoubtedly a much-improved
district since the first of 29 alternative middle schools opened in
1974, choice proponents, who surely know better, persist in using
outdated statistics showing that 62 percent of that district's pupils
are performing at or above grade level in reading skills. In fact, only
38.3 percent scored were at grade level in reading in 1992, ranking
District 4 in the bottom third citywide. The point here is not to
overemphasize standardized tests--least of all in New York, where such
figures are notoriously prone to manipulation. Nor is it to denigrate
either East Harlem or Cambridge, each of which can be justly proud of
its achievements against great odds. It is merely to return some
semblance of accuracy and perspective to the choice discussion.

We worried, too, about emerging inequities. From Milwaukee to
Montclair, N.J., the cards in this complicated new game of choice are
heavily stacked in favor of better-educated parents. In statewide
schemes especially, choice effectively excludes most parents unable to
drive their children to school, since most states and districts have
shied from the expense of offering much transportation help. Not
surprisingly, then, we found that fewer than 2 percent of pupils in the
13 states with choice systems are participating.

Even more alarming is the ruinous competition we discovered in
states where choice pits poor districts against neighboring ones with
higher per-pupil spending and smaller class sizes. Districts like
Exira, Iowa; Gloucester and Hopkinton, Mass.; Motley, Minn.; and
Batesville, Ark., are among some of the early casualties that have lost
students and state aid to better-off neighbors.

The depressed city of Brockton, Mass., for example, has lost several
hundred students, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in state aid, to
its suburban neighbor, Avon. It's not hard to see why: Avon spends more
than $10,000 per high school pupil, more than double what Brockton
spends. What's happening here, and in similar situations elsewhere, has
absolutely nothing to do with school reform. A lucky few students may
benefit. But it is simply perverse to suggest that transferring state
funds from Brockton to its better-off neighbor will somehow motivate
the poorer district to improve.

Carnegie's revelations of the complications, limitations, and
hazards of choice programs now in place did not, in any way, argue
against the merits of giving parents and students more options.
Happily, most reviewers grasped that distinction. Choice's most zealous
champions, however, promptly accused Carnegie of trying to "build a
case against choice.'' One writer, for example, went so far as to
accuse our report of "mushing together ... paper-tiger state
mandates,'' "genuine community choice movements,'' and "embryonic
voucher programs,'' calling them all "choice,'' and then
"pontificating'' that the results are mixed. Carnegie's sin, from that
viewpoint, was to study choice as it operates in the real world, rather
than as its proponents believe it might in some imaginary setting free
of such inconveniences as politics, the U.S. Constitution, teacher
unions, state education laws, federal laws protecting those with
disabilities, and school-funding inequities.

Still, our findings might be vulnerable to a more serious challenge.
Is it possible that the problems we described are fleeting--the
product, perhaps, of a sour economic climate, or the short duration of
these choice programs?

One possible source of answers is the choice experiment that took
place some 20 years ago in Alum Rock, an elementary and middle school
district within San Jose, Calif. The federally backed experiment was
designed to test whether offering parents vouchers usable in any
school, public or private, would lead to overall school
improvement.

For a variety of political and economic reasons, the project never
included private schools and it officially ended in 1976, after about
four years. Still, Alum Rock remains one of the most carefully
documented choice experiments, and has relevant lessons for the current
debate. The RAND Corporation produced a six-volume study of the project
and concluded:

There were "no appreciable differences'' between alternative and
regular schools in student reading achievement, and parental choices
were "unrelated to student achievement.''

Better-educated parents were most likely to evaluate school
alternatives and understand the rules governing choice.

In selecting schools, academic quality and curriculum matters
take a back seat to noninstructional considerations like convenience,
the desire to keep siblings or friends together, or the ethnic or
social composition of the school.

Alum Rock even offers a postscript for those who still imagine that
choice is a cheap ticket to excellence. Lawrence Aceves, the current
superintendent, says a $700,000 transportation deficit may force an end
soon to the district's policy of providing free bus rides to students
who choose to attend schools outside their attendance zone. That would
render choice moot for most students in this sprawling district of 45
square miles with little public transportation.

As Carnegie's president, Ernest L. Boyer, wrote in his foreword to
"School Choice'': "It's time to move beyond the ideological
confrontations and develop a larger, more inclusive strategy for school
reform--one that focuses not on school location but on learning, not
just on choice but on children.''

Lee Mitgang, a senior fellow of the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, was the principal researcher for the
foundation's study, "School Choice."

Vol. 12, Issue 22, Page 29

Published in Print: February 24, 1993, as School Choice, Carnegie, and Alum Rock

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